New Warhammer 40,000 Edition announced!

[HeadlessCross]

3 minutes ago, Antarius said:

But on the other hand, there's also something to be said for distinct subfactions having themed rules to represent them in a more thematically evocative fashion.
 

As I stated earlier, the problem is that it creates Planet Of Hats list writing and assumes Blood Angels aren't ever trained on stealth missions. Infiltrate? What's that?

[HeadlessCross]

Also noticed in the article that they're gonna arbitrarily increase the points of Battle Shock mechanic units, despite them not being good to begin with. Increasing them now just keeps things even, where you're still not going to take them. GW needs to leave them as is and then see if there's any offenders that need the increase. 

[01RTB01]

11 minutes ago, Lexington said:

 

I dunno, this seems to me to be relying on Detachment/Special Rules to do things that you, as a player, can do by just building an army and playing them properly. Evil Sunz run fast things, Goffs have Boyz hordes, Bad Moons get all the good gear, etc. I've been playing Orks since 2nd Edition, and at no time has it been difficult to represent the Clans with the basic army list. There's Clans where that isn't so straightforward to build a whole army around - Deathskulls have Lootas, Snakebites have...uh...Runtherds? - but they're well represented by basic units anyhow. That's just how Orks have always been portrayed.

 

This is something that applies pretty broadly to the other 40K factions/sub-factions. Like someone alluded to above, Space Marines remain the problem child here, given that several Chapters have ended up with a laundry list of unique units and traits, but even those can be represented by unit choice and play style. I get that people want their chosen force to be better at their individual gimmicks, but I think that's letting the rules do the work for you.

 

Representation and feel are very different things. I've also played orks since 2nd Ed and I'd argue that there's more thematic flavour than there has been previously. However, I do miss clan specific strats whereby you could loot enemy vehicles mid game and bolt armour onto units.

 

"Playing them properly" "let the rules do the work for you" feel like quite loaded and accusatory terms. Stratagems, objectives and detachment rules can feed the flavour and narrative of a force. 

 

It may never have been difficult to represent the different clans, but various iterations of rules have given different or better feel for the army. Taking 2nd Ed as an example, all Boyz were basically the same. The only real difference for the clans really was loadouts. Is that what it boils down to? I'd argue not and clearly with how the rules have changed over the years, there were other ways that clan flavour could be developed. It's nothing to do with "the rules doing the work for me". 

 

 

[Malakithe]

All those point increasing categories can be found in nearly every unit in the game lol at a glance sounds like Nids are F'd on points. I hope they looked at everything individually and not plug it all into a calculator 

[Lexington]

1 hour ago, HeadlessCross said:

As I stated earlier, the problem is that it creates Planet Of Hats list writing and assumes Blood Angels aren't ever trained on stealth missions. Infiltrate? What's that?

I feel like this assumes a lot of things about Chapter/sub-faction special rules that aren't actually implicit in the concept, or even a reflection of how they've been written in the past. There's never, to my knowledge, been a general Blood Angels Codex where they weren't able to use infiltration elements. There've been times where they're not as good at it as, say, Raven Guard, but that's not the same as being incapable. That's just being as capable as any other Space Marine Chapter that isn't Raven Guard. I don't think this is necessarily a great way to do things, but "Planet of the Hats" it is not.

 

1 hour ago, 01RTB01 said:

It may never have been difficult to represent the different clans, but various iterations of rules have given different or better feel for the army. Taking 2nd Ed as an example, all Boyz were basically the same. The only real difference for the clans really was loadouts. Is that what it boils down to? I'd argue not and clearly with how the rules have changed over the years, there were other ways that clan flavour could be developed. It's nothing to do with "the rules doing the work for me". 

The issue here, I guess, is the question of how much rules need to push and provide the "flavor" of an army as opposed to providing a toolbox. To me, it seems like the army itself should provide a broad spectrum of different capabilities, and it's the choices of the player - in army construction, in play style, in hobby and narrative efforts, etc. - that should give an army its character. An Evil Sunz lad and a Goff aren't so different on an individual level that it needs to be modeled at the scale of the 40K ruleset, but the choices that comprise the forces they run with will make them feel different as a whole. Hell, those choices don't even have to fit the stereotypes. There's Goff Kommandos in the world, after all, and even hoary old Snakebite Meks are going to pop out a wild Shokk Dragster or two every once in a while. All of these things can happen with a good base army list, and I don't think any of it needs to be incentivized by in-game bonuses for sticking to a theme. The theme is already baked in by your choices as a player.

[Evil Eye]

I feel like to some degree minorly-divergent subfactions should be representable via the basic army construction system rather than bolt-on rules. For sure, having a subfaction rule for every single First Founding Codex Compliant Space Marine Chapter (try saying that five times fast!) is definitely excessive and would be better served with the Space Marine Codex just having the tools to represent differently specialized Chapters "out the book". Not only for simplicity's sake but also for /yourdudes/ Chapters who have a specialism (within reason) not covered by any of the existing canon Chapters.

 

However, there are some significant caveats.

 

Firstly, majorly divergent subfactions (Space Wolves or Death Guard as just two examples) need to have SOME kind of additional rules to avoid them just being "reskins" when in the fluff they wage war very, very differently from their more vanilla counterparts. Space Wolves are supposed to be incredibly differently organized from Codex Chapters; instead of going Scout > Assault > Devastator and finally Tactical as their basic induction process before progressing onto more specialized/veteran roles, new Space Wolves are always started off in the Blood Claws, with Swiftclaws (Bikers) and Skyclaws (Assault Marines) being specialisms they may be directed into depending on their temperament, and only when they are judged worthy do they become full Grey Hunters, with Long Fangs being seasoned veterans and Wolf Scouts being more experienced Grey Hunters who prefer the more solitary tasks. Even aside from things like being able to use a bolter one-handed and having heightened senses, their entire organizational structure is so completely and totally different from Compliant Chapters that you would at minimum need a fairly weighty supplement to make the Space Marine Codex represent them properly, but ideally their own Codex. Blood Angels could work with a supplement, but would still need significantly different rules to actually play like Blood Angels rather than just assault-focused Marines, as their divergences are largely a manner of necessity due to the Flaw rather than just Dante going "I think the Codex Astartes sucks!". As for Death Guard, whilst I can certainly see the argument for them being part of the Chaos Space Marine Codex, they differ substantially enough from other Nurgle warbands that I think they deserve their own book; in fact my big problem with the treatment of the other Cult Legions is less "Why did they get their own books?" and more "Why didn't they get all the awesome stuff Death Guard got?". Not all Nurgle warbands are Death Guard; a more recently fallen warband sworn to Nurgle might still use a lot of Rhinos, whereas the Death Guard themselves if memory serves make little use of them due to having lost most of their fleet to battles and the ravages of time, but make up for it with their own unique daemon engines and vehicles and such.

 

On that note, I think a big problem with the current system of representing subfactions is that customization across the board has been drastically reduced. To make a Tyranid Warrior brood from one Hive Fleet feel remotely different from another (which they should given the whole "constantly adapting" thing) you need some kind of subfaction rules nowadays, compared to in 3rd or 4th where a Tyranid Warrior could be equipped basically any way you can imagine and additional subfaction rules would have been totally redundant. Likewise, circling back to Death Guard, the 3.5 Chaos book gave rules for "regular" Nurgle warbands, or actual Death Guard, which had some additional restrictions but gained some nice boons that "normal" Nurgle armies couldn't use.

 

Speaking of which, I think "Special characters unlock subfaction rules" is doing it backwards; really, choosing a subfaction (and its accompanying bonuses and restrictions) should be necessary to use a special character, or at least you shouldn't be able to use them in the "wrong" subfaction. That way, Imperial Fists players aren't taking Tor Garadon or Lysander unless they actually want to take him, and also avoids nonsense like Vulkan He'stan turning up in Ultramarines armies. For example, going back to White Scars, I'd say the base Codex should have options to take a recon/bike heavy force, and the White Scars faction rules would basically amount to "You can take more speedy stuff and gain some minor buffs to certain units but get more limited access to certain other desirable options (Dreadnoughts etc, which the Scars canonically don't make much use of). Also whilst you absolutely don't have to run White Scars or Kho'Sarro Khan with these rules, you can't take Kho'sarro Khan with other Chapter Tactics". Obviously you would have to make sure the buffs were well balanced against the penalties, to avoid either so heavily restricting the player that there's only one real way to play the subfaction rather than a general specialism, or going too far the other way and making the subfaction a flat upgrade as the things you lose access to are completely worthless. I do believe it is possible, to be fair, and certainly preferable to "That's my own original character, Blarneus Blalgar!" but it is a difficult balance to strike.

 

As one final note, whilst I do think it is primarily an issue with Marines (Loyalist AND Chaos) I think that's less because other armies don't deserve specialism rules and more because other armies are inherently more flexible with organization due to not having as extensively detailed organizations and also being in-universe less hidebound by tradition. With Orks, for example, Evil Sunz are predominantly (but not exclusively) Speed Freekz, but not every Speed Freek WAAAGH! will be Evil Sunz. Meanwhile Tyranids' entire thing is being immensely flexible and constantly adapting at the cellular level to face different foes, and don't even have a concept of tradition or culture beyond "This prey is most susceptible to [X]" and a Hive Fleet evolving to predate on a specific species doesn't need rigid "faction" rules- what they need is sufficient customization options to represent such adaptations on the tabletop.

 

To summarize yet another wall o' text (whoops, did I do that?):
>Army customization rules are sorely lacking and that makes it harder to "natively" differentiate armies from each other, and this should be improved

>There should be options to tailor your army to fit home-grown dudes with their own specialisms/niches rather than just reskins of the poster boys

>Some subfactions are so distinct that they need a supplement or even a full Codex to actually behave like they're supposed to

>Subfactions less divergent than the above but still notably specialized should have some minor additional rules which basically act as guidelines for existing army customization rules
>Subfaction rules should unlock named guys, not the other way around, or at least be mutually exclusive with each other

>Some races aren't as reliant on subfaction rules to properly represent them on the tabletop, but they still deserve plenty of army specialization/customization options at some level

 

...This was meant to be a quick reply, once...

[HeadlessCross]

1 hour ago, Lexington said:

I don't think this is necessarily a great way to do things, but "Planet of the Hats" it is not.

It absolutely is, because it only rewards one way of building for one specific Chapter. How is that not the trope?

[HeadlessCross]

10 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

I feel like to some degree minorly-divergent subfactions should be representable via the basic army construction system rather than bolt-on rules. For sure, having a subfaction rule for every single First Founding Codex Compliant Space Marine Chapter (try saying that five times fast!) is definitely excessive and would be better served with the Space Marine Codex just having the tools to represent differently specialized Chapters "out the book". Not only for simplicity's sake but also for /yourdudes/ Chapters who have a specialism (within reason) not covered by any of the existing canon Chapters.

 

However, there are some significant caveats.

 

Firstly, majorly divergent subfactions (Space Wolves or Death Guard as just two examples) need to have SOME kind of additional rules to avoid them just being "reskins" when in the fluff they wage war very, very differently from their more vanilla counterparts. Space Wolves are supposed to be incredibly differently organized from Codex Chapters; instead of going Scout > Assault > Devastator and finally Tactical as their basic induction process before progressing onto more specialized/veteran roles, new Space Wolves are always started off in the Blood Claws, with Swiftclaws (Bikers) and Skyclaws (Assault Marines) being specialisms they may be directed into depending on their temperament, and only when they are judged worthy do they become full Grey Hunters, with Long Fangs being seasoned veterans and Wolf Scouts being more experienced Grey Hunters who prefer the more solitary tasks. Even aside from things like being able to use a bolter one-handed and having heightened senses, their entire organizational structure is so completely and totally different from Compliant Chapters that you would at minimum need a fairly weighty supplement to make the Space Marine Codex represent them properly, but ideally their own Codex. Blood Angels could work with a supplement, but would still need significantly different rules to actually play like Blood Angels rather than just assault-focused Marines, as their divergences are largely a manner of necessity due to the Flaw rather than just Dante going "I think the Codex Astartes sucks!". As for Death Guard, whilst I can certainly see the argument for them being part of the Chaos Space Marine Codex, they differ substantially enough from other Nurgle warbands that I think they deserve their own book; in fact my big problem with the treatment of the other Cult Legions is less "Why did they get their own books?" and more "Why didn't they get all the awesome stuff Death Guard got?". Not all Nurgle warbands are Death Guard; a more recently fallen warband sworn to Nurgle might still use a lot of Rhinos, whereas the Death Guard themselves if memory serves make little use of them due to having lost most of their fleet to battles and the ravages of time, but make up for it with their own unique daemon engines and vehicles and such.

 

On that note, I think a big problem with the current system of representing subfactions is that customization across the board has been drastically reduced. To make a Tyranid Warrior brood from one Hive Fleet feel remotely different from another (which they should given the whole "constantly adapting" thing) you need some kind of subfaction rules nowadays, compared to in 3rd or 4th where a Tyranid Warrior could be equipped basically any way you can imagine and additional subfaction rules would have been totally redundant. Likewise, circling back to Death Guard, the 3.5 Chaos book gave rules for "regular" Nurgle warbands, or actual Death Guard, which had some additional restrictions but gained some nice boons that "normal" Nurgle armies couldn't use.

 

Speaking of which, I think "Special characters unlock subfaction rules" is doing it backwards; really, choosing a subfaction (and its accompanying bonuses and restrictions) should be necessary to use a special character, or at least you shouldn't be able to use them in the "wrong" subfaction. That way, Imperial Fists players aren't taking Tor Garadon or Lysander unless they actually want to take him, and also avoids nonsense like Vulkan He'stan turning up in Ultramarines armies. For example, going back to White Scars, I'd say the base Codex should have options to take a recon/bike heavy force, and the White Scars faction rules would basically amount to "You can take more speedy stuff and gain some minor buffs to certain units but get more limited access to certain other desirable options (Dreadnoughts etc, which the Scars canonically don't make much use of). Also whilst you absolutely don't have to run White Scars or Kho'Sarro Khan with these rules, you can't take Kho'sarro Khan with other Chapter Tactics". Obviously you would have to make sure the buffs were well balanced against the penalties, to avoid either so heavily restricting the player that there's only one real way to play the subfaction rather than a general specialism, or going too far the other way and making the subfaction a flat upgrade as the things you lose access to are completely worthless. I do believe it is possible, to be fair, and certainly preferable to "That's my own original character, Blarneus Blalgar!" but it is a difficult balance to strike.

 

As one final note, whilst I do think it is primarily an issue with Marines (Loyalist AND Chaos) I think that's less because other armies don't deserve specialism rules and more because other armies are inherently more flexible with organization due to not having as extensively detailed organizations and also being in-universe less hidebound by tradition. With Orks, for example, Evil Sunz are predominantly (but not exclusively) Speed Freekz, but not every Speed Freek WAAAGH! will be Evil Sunz. Meanwhile Tyranids' entire thing is being immensely flexible and constantly adapting at the cellular level to face different foes, and don't even have a concept of tradition or culture beyond "This prey is most susceptible to [X]" and a Hive Fleet evolving to predate on a specific species doesn't need rigid "faction" rules- what they need is sufficient customization options to represent such adaptations on the tabletop.

 

To summarize yet another wall o' text (whoops, did I do that?):
>Army customization rules are sorely lacking and that makes it harder to "natively" differentiate armies from each other, and this should be improved

>There should be options to tailor your army to fit home-grown dudes with their own specialisms/niches rather than just reskins of the poster boys

>Some subfactions are so distinct that they need a supplement or even a full Codex to actually behave like they're supposed to

>Subfactions less divergent than the above but still notably specialized should have some minor additional rules which basically act as guidelines for existing army customization rules
>Subfaction rules should unlock named guys, not the other way around, or at least be mutually exclusive with each other

>Some races aren't as reliant on subfaction rules to properly represent them on the tabletop, but they still deserve plenty of army specialization/customization options at some level

 

...This was meant to be a quick reply, once...

If you really wanted to compromise, the best way to fix it would be to kinda combine 9th's system with this system. You have a base you use as the main rule (for example, someone really wanting that FNP6+ for their Iron Hands) and then you pick from a subset of 9-12 different rules to represent a particular company or deviation, like just as an example giving all Infantry the Scout rule (once again, just an example) or extra range on non-Pistol weapons. This means you could better represent a 10th or 9th company for Blood Angels or Iron Hands while keeping in mind their tendencies. 

 

That leads to certain combos just being better than others though by default (depending on those subset of rules), which can ultimately lead back to Planet Of Hats. 

[Evil Eye]

11 minutes ago, HeadlessCross said:

It absolutely is, because it only rewards one way of building for one specific Chapter. How is that not the trope?

I think it's a matter of execution. As just one example, for the rules to make Raven Guard and their successors best suited for covert operations, that can be represented a number of different ways; as some general edition-agnostic ideas, sniper rifles as special weapons options in Tactical/Intercessor squads, the option for infiltration/covert deployment for certain assault units, smaller vehicles like Rhinos having electronic countermeasures against enemy detection, smoke grenades being wargear available to most infantry, some kind of rules for silenced weapons, etc etc etc. None of these are so hyper-specialized that it railroads the player into a single basic list, but generally shifts their playstyle to one of evasion, encirclement etc rather than direct frontal assaults. You could do mechanized Raven Guard with the previously mentioned stealth Rhinos, or you could go all in on snipers and long-range assassination, or go the other way with infiltrating commando-style melee antics (a 7 foot tall power-armoured superhuman appearing out of nowhere and silently knifing your buddies is really going to put a dampener on your day!), I could go on. The Raven Guard's specialism of clandestine warfare is a broad enough concept that it can encompass a wide variety of different units, weapons and army compositions, it just means you're less likely to take a Land Raider Crusader filled with Terminators than a squad of Veterans in Phobos armour with silenced guns and long knives.

 

If we're using "planet of hats" as a comparison, it's the difference between "Black headwear is popular on this planet" and "Everyone wears a black felt bowler hat on this planet without exception".

[Crimson Longinus]

23 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

I think it's a matter of execution. As just one example, for the rules to make Raven Guard and their successors best suited for covert operations, that can be represented a number of different ways; as some general edition-agnostic ideas, sniper rifles as special weapons options in Tactical/Intercessor squads, the option for infiltration/covert deployment for certain assault units, smaller vehicles like Rhinos having electronic countermeasures against enemy detection, smoke grenades being wargear available to most infantry, some kind of rules for silenced weapons, etc etc etc. None of these are so hyper-specialized that it railroads the player into a single basic list, but generally shifts their playstyle to one of evasion, encirclement etc rather than direct frontal assaults. You could do mechanized Raven Guard with the previously mentioned stealth Rhinos, or you could go all in on snipers and long-range assassination, or go the other way with infiltrating commando-style melee antics (a 7 foot tall power-armoured superhuman appearing out of nowhere and silently knifing your buddies is really going to put a dampener on your day!), I could go on. The Raven Guard's specialism of clandestine warfare is a broad enough concept that it can encompass a wide variety of different units, weapons and army compositions, it just means you're less likely to take a Land Raider Crusader filled with Terminators than a squad of Veterans in Phobos armour with silenced guns and long knives.

 

If we're using "planet of hats" as a comparison, it's the difference between "Black headwear is popular on this planet" and "Everyone wears a black felt bowler hat on this planet without exception".

 

It is really difficult to do this in such way, that there just isn't obviously better and worse chapters to run a certain collection of units as. Like with any version of such rules we've had, this has happened. And then it effectively means that certain units are married to certain chapters and little else gets used. At least the current version of the rule bloat packages are in theory chapter agnostic, so people should not whine if you run your blue marines assault units with the rules that actually benefit said units instead of them sucking because you painted them wrong. (I mean, painting marines as Ultramarinse is always wrong, aesthetically speaking, but aside of that.)

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

7 hours ago, Mogger351 said:

I think to some degree you're arguing the same side of the same coin.

 

To give a poor example, if kommandos have more blood axe themed rules, and you want a blood axe army, they could become battleline with snikrot. You could then maybe buy some enhancements to give infantry units stealth, or bake it into snikrot again.

 

You get a clear themed force, but without a rules layer.

Why should i be forced to use a special character to get benefits of special rules for a specific subfaction?

 

6 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

As I stated earlier, the problem is that it creates Planet Of Hats list writing and assumes Blood Angels aren't ever trained on stealth missions. Infiltrate? What's that?

What in the world in the rules makes that assumption?

 

4 hours ago, Lexington said:

I feel like this assumes a lot of things about Chapter/sub-faction special rules that aren't actually implicit in the concept, or even a reflection of how they've been written in the past. There's never, to my knowledge, been a general Blood Angels Codex where they weren't able to use infiltration elements. There've been times where they're not as good at it as, say, Raven Guard, but that's not the same as being incapable. That's just being as capable as any other Space Marine Chapter that isn't Raven Guard. I don't think this is necessarily a great way to do things, but "Planet of the Hats" it is not.

 

The issue here, I guess, is the question of how much rules need to push and provide the "flavor" of an army as opposed to providing a toolbox. To me, it seems like the army itself should provide a broad spectrum of different capabilities, and it's the choices of the player - in army construction, in play style, in hobby and narrative efforts, etc. - that should give an army its character. An Evil Sunz lad and a Goff aren't so different on an individual level that it needs to be modeled at the scale of the 40K ruleset, but the choices that comprise the forces they run with will make them feel different as a whole. Hell, those choices don't even have to fit the stereotypes. There's Goff Kommandos in the world, after all, and even hoary old Snakebite Meks are going to pop out a wild Shokk Dragster or two every once in a while. All of these things can happen with a good base army list, and I don't think any of it needs to be incentivized by in-game bonuses for sticking to a theme. The theme is already baked in by your choices as a player.

But the themes aren’t baked in to unit choices.

you can choose the same units and run them as ‘UM’ and ‘BA’ and there’s 0 difference. 0 theme beyond paint color.

 

2 hours ago, HeadlessCross said:

It absolutely is, because it only rewards one way of building for one specific Chapter. How is that not the trope?

Because we have multiple detachments or rules available for many of these chapters.

 

 

[Crimson Longinus]

17 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

you can choose the same units and run them as ‘UM’ and ‘BA’ and there’s 0 difference. 0 theme beyond paint color.

 

And if we pay the same points for them, that's how it should be. You just cannot have BA getting bonus to assault units and UM to shooty units, as that will just mean BA will not run shooty units (as they are overcosted) and UM does not run assault units (as they are overcosted.)

 

I don't understand how this is so hard to get: units should be costed for what they're worth and free bonuses will mess up that balancing. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

2 hours ago, Crimson Longinus said:

 

And if we pay the same points for them, that's how it should be. You just cannot have BA getting bonus to assault units and UM to shooty units, as that will just mean BA will not run shooty units (as they are overcosted) and UM does not run assault units (as they are overcosted.)

 

I don't understand how this is so hard to get: units should be costed for what they're worth and free bonuses will mess up that balancing. 

No it doesn’t.

 

my BA lists always include at least as many ranged units as melee, but often slightly more.

 

and in the end, who cares? Most people play BA because they like melee, and jump packs. 
Most people build their BA army as almost all melee any way if unit choice is the only manner of having any sort of theme…so you’re literally demanding what you’re claiming is the problem with detachment/subfaction rules.

 

when I eventually play 11th I’m looking at 2 1DP BA detachments and the speeder detachment. 
It’ll be a very fluffy list for my successor chapter and BA as a whole. 

[Crimson Longinus]

9 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

and in the end, who cares?

 

People who care about good game design. 

 

9 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

 

Most people play BA because they like melee, and jump packs. 
Most people build their BA army as almost all melee any way if unit choice is the only manner of having any sort of theme…so you’re literally demanding what you’re claiming is the problem with detachment/subfaction rules.

 

Issue is not that BA tend to run assault and jump units. The issue arises if I can take those exact same units as another chapter and end up with significantly worse army. Yes, the issue is not so pressing with the current chapter agnostic detachments, as any chapter can take them, but then they also are a rather questionable chapter theming tool as they're not actually tied to chapters. 

 

Like how can you not see an issue with everyone paying the same points for their units, but some subfactions getting free bonuses for some units? It is blindingly obvious, that doing so messes up the balancing. If the unit is costed like it didn't have the bonus, it is undercosted if you have it, and if it is costed like you have it is overcosted if you don't have it. This is inescapable. 

 

And it is an issue with detachmets too. Like how SoB repentia are costed like they had bonuses of the penitent detachment, so no one uses them outside of it, as they are overcosted. But it would be nice to just be able to take some repentia in more balanced force without having to go all in. And GW has recognised the issue; the mix-and-match detachments are an attempted fix, and it can work if appropriate small detachemnts for given units exist. But it would be far easier and more elegant to just do away with the detachments, and give the units whatever rules they need to function as a default, and then appropriately cost them for it. 

[Karhedron]

25 minutes ago, Crimson Longinus said:

Like how can you not see an issue with everyone paying the same points for their units, but some subfactions getting free bonuses for some units? It is blindingly obvious, that doing so messes up the balancing. If the unit is costed like it didn't have the bonus, it is undercosted if you have it, and if it is costed like you have it is overcosted if you don't have it. This is inescapable. 

 

The idea is that Detachments are balanced against each other. It doesn't matter if Detachment A has better melee buffs and Detachment B has better shooting buffs as long as they work out balanced in play. I play Blood Angels so I do have quite a few melee units but I can't get by without shooting. I need some firepower to either thin hordes before my melee specialists get there or to take out tanks and monsters that they would struggle to wound with melee weapons alone.

 

My shooty units are less good than they would be in a different Detachment but that is the price I pay for taking a more specialised Detachment. I could choose to ditch shooty units entirely and try to survive just on melee but I know it would be very difficult.

 

As long as the Detachment buffs work out fairly then it is fine. If I end up facing a shooty list then it comes down who can play a better game and get the most out of their buffs. The issue is that different Detachments are not always well balanced. Only one of the Detachments in the BA codex was actually good enough for competitive play. This is something GW have realised and rolled out online Detachments and now given Detachments their own points. There is nothing wrong with Assault Squads being better in a BA list than other SM lists as long as the other Detachments have different bonuses of equal value.

[Crimson Longinus]

57 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

The idea is that Detachments are balanced against each other. It doesn't matter if Detachment A has better melee buffs and Detachment B has better shooting buffs as long as they work out balanced in play. I play Blood Angels so I do have quite a few melee units but I can't get by without shooting. I need some firepower to either thin hordes before my melee specialists get there or to take out tanks and monsters that they would struggle to wound with melee weapons alone.

 

My shooty units are less good than they would be in a different Detachment but that is the price I pay for taking a more specialised Detachment. I could choose to ditch shooty units entirely and try to survive just on melee but I know it would be very difficult.

 

Right. And that can work if the bonus rule layer is lore agnostic. If you want to run a BA list composed solely of shooty units, you can take a detachment that supports that instead. If one want to run a Ultramarine jump assault army one can take a detachment that supports that. But then it is questionable how well such rules support chapter lore, as they're not tied to the lore in the first place. But if you tie to the lore, then we have the issue of flanderisation via making certain builds just flat out worse for some chapters. 

[Mogger351]

15 minutes ago, Crimson Longinus said:

 

Right. And that can work if the bonus rule layer is lore agnostic. If you want to run a BA list composed solely of shooty units, you can take a detachment that supports that instead. If one want to run a Ultramarine jump assault army one can take a detachment that supports that. But then it is questionable how well such rules support chapter lore, as they're not tied to the lore in the first place. But if you tie to the lore, then we have the issue of flanderisation via making certain builds just flat out worse for some chapters. 

It can't be done. Detachments, subfaction rules, bespoke codex, doesn't matter. By definition you shoehorn blood angels as an example into one specific playstyle by incentivising one unit or the other. If that doesn't overlap with their historic/narrative specialities you erode identity.

 

It's impossible to solve without removing the notion of either their tendencies for melee and flight, or by over valuing removing units that don't align with their core tenet.

 

Which is the lesser of the evils?

[Crimson Longinus]

10 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

It can't be done. Detachments, subfaction rules, bespoke codex, doesn't matter. By definition you shoehorn blood angels as an example into one specific playstyle by incentivising one unit or the other. If that doesn't overlap with their historic/narrative specialities you erode identity.

 

It's impossible to solve without removing the notion of either their tendencies for melee and flight, or by over valuing removing units that don't align with their core tenet.

 

Which is the lesser of the evils?

 

Sure. Though even without bespoke rules, you can still play a "traditional" BA army, your build just won't be unfairly better than similar build for other chapters. 

Though you of course could do it if bespoke rules came with bespoke points. Then BA assault marines can be better than UM assault marines and appropriately costed for it. 

[Mogger351]

7 minutes ago, Crimson Longinus said:

 

Sure. Though even without bespoke rules, you can still play a "traditional" BA army, your build just won't be unfairly better than similar build for other chapters. 

Though you of course could do it if bespoke rules came with bespoke points. Then BA assault marines can be better than UM assault marines and appropriately costed for it. 

 

Yes, but when you've shoehorned all your jump assualt units into being better than the ultramarine ones, why would you take a load of tanks and stealth units who are otherwise identical to the vanilla ones?

[Crimson Longinus]

11 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

 

Yes, but when you've shoehorned all your jump assualt units into being better than the ultramarine ones, why would you take a load of tanks and stealth units who are otherwise identical to the vanilla ones?

 

You might for change. Perhaps you chose BA because you like the aesthetics, but actually like playstyle of stealth units or tanks? If the better jump units come with appropriately higher cost, whist these vanilla capable tanks and stealth units come with the basic cost, you're at least not hurting your performance by choosing them instead. 

[Karhedron]

9 minutes ago, Mogger351 said:

Yes, but when you've shoehorned all your jump assault units into being better than the ultramarine ones, why would you take a load of tanks and stealth units who are otherwise identical to the vanilla ones?

 

Because an army of just Assault Marines will struggle against a lot of opponents, even if they are better than standard. Assault Marines will struggle to kill anything over T6 and/or with a 2+ save. Similarly they are not ideal for actions as you are then paying for melee ability they are not using. I play Blood Angels but I still bring some tanks because I need the firepower. They are not as good as tanks in some other Detachments but I still need those tools in my army. I also usually bring a Phobos unit and some Scouts because they can screen, infiltrate and do actions which my army still needs. They are not as good as in stealthy detachments but I need them so I take them, even if my Detachment does not particularly buff them.

 

The power of most Detachments that only buff a portion of the army tend to be self-limiting because an army that exclusively relies on one type of unit will struggle against certain opponents or on certain missions. You can go down the rabbit hole of playing rock-paper-scissors but it rarely ends well. You only have to look at most tournament Blood Angel lists to see that. They usually include at least a couple of tanks for firepower and a couple of units for doing actions, taking Objectives and performing actions.

 

You can't win a lot of missions just by killing the enemy (even if it does make life easier).

[Karhedron]

3 minutes ago, Crimson Longinus said:

If the better jump units come with appropriately higher cost, whist these vanilla capable tanks and stealth units come with the basic cost, you're at least not hurting your performance by choosing them instead. 

 

Better jump troops don't pay more points but what you do pay is the OPPORTUNITY COST of not taking other buffs that affect different units.

 

You are thinking that 2000 points is all you get but you actually get 2000 points + a limited set of buffs (or 3DPs in 11th edition). If you choose to spend your buffs on unit type X, that is balanced by the fact you are not buffing unit Y. You don't need to change the points costs of individual units as long as all factions have a range of evenly balanced Detachments to choose from. You pay the opportunity cost for the buffs, not a points cost.

[Dudley Nightshade]

This discussion goes back decades. Should the way an army plays on the table be better or worse because of the colour of paint used? If you adhere to the lore, then yes. If you are more interested in the game, then no. I think we can mostly agree that using unique characters to unlock army composition was a bad way to handle it. Detachments, imperfect as they are, seem better. You *can* create a lore-adherent army using the "right" colour of paint with a specific detachment, and as a bonus, if you happen to have painted your guys a different colour, you do not have to punish yourself by taking a suboptimal army to your next game.

 

As we're seeing, it creates situations where you cannot take a lore-adherent army in certain circumstances. That sucks, but this situation requires compromise, either in the game or the lore. If you stick to the lore and reward specific chapters for the colour of their armour, players can make an army that plays the way they are written. However, you can also put players in a funny spot where if they have painted Raven Guard but want to try a melee army, they have to deliberately disadvantage their army, or their black marines "count as" red ones because they want to be choppy instead of sneaky.

 

Since the lore spans multiple editions, but the rules do not, it makes the most sense to tie army composition to the rules rather than the lore. If the new edition does not favour choppy armies, should BA players be punished for painting their dudes red? With detachments, they can still create an army that doesn't suck when the game dictates that shooting is better.

[Evil Eye]

17 hours ago, Crimson Longinus said:

 

It is really difficult to do this in such way, that there just isn't obviously better and worse chapters to run a certain collection of units as. Like with any version of such rules we've had, this has happened. And then it effectively means that certain units are married to certain chapters and little else gets used. At least the current version of the rule bloat packages are in theory chapter agnostic, so people should not whine if you run your blue marines assault units with the rules that actually benefit said units instead of them sucking because you painted them wrong. (I mean, painting marines as Ultramarinse is always wrong, aesthetically speaking, but aside of that.)

I take your point but honestly I'd rather have the options for more army customization and better representation of Chapters and their successors at the expense of a little internal balance than just no customization options at all. There will always be winners and losers in an army roster, but extreme cases aside outside of tournament play it's not that important- generally you can still have a fun time playing an army that isn't optimized to be as good as possible, at least unless you're deliberately trying to pick the worst army list imaginable (and if you are, you're probably doing so for fun anyway).

 

Of course this is assuming both players are acting in good faith and have made their intention for the game clear (so someone isn't saying they want a friendly game or fluff-driven scenario but then pulling a "Gotcha" with a nonsensical but technically legal 5E Draigowing-tier cheesefest) but that's an issue outside game design's ability to solve, short of GW selling a functional Crozius Arcanum and adding to the rules that dickish players are obliged to be bonked on the head with said Crozius in the event of trying to pull a fast one (the Dreadsock Clause).

[Xenith]

I got the shipping notification from Travelling Man this afternoon!

Edited June 16 by Xenith